Vulnerability-in-Production: A Spatial History of Nature, Affluence, and Fire in Oakland, California

Vulnerability-in-production is offered as a theoretical construct to highlight two interrelated aspects of vulnerability: a process where landscapes are altered and developed in a manner that retains their productivity for property owners and other stakeholders and a recursive and relational process that is always in production and inscribed unevenly over time and space. The 1991 Oakland Hills (Tunnel) Firestorm remains the largest conflagration—in terms of numbers of dwellings destroyed—in California's history. Using the Tunnel Fire as a starting point for analysis, this article argues for the dedicated application of spatial history analysis to vulnerability. A first spatial history section highlights how land development strategies from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s contributed to the production of vulnerable conditions in Oakland. A second section describes how conservative homeowner politics and state tax restructuring spanning the 1950s to the 1980s further generated vulnerabilities throughout the city. A third spatial history section reveals processes that undergird and connect uneven patterns of affluence and vulnerability within Oakland. Collectively, these sections enhance our epistemic commitment to the study of vulnerability through spatial–historical analysis that uses diverse data, visualizations, and analytic techniques; our understanding of vulnerability as a recursive and relational process; and our appreciation for the political ecological nature of vulnerability—where affluence and levels of net vulnerability are highly uneven yet also deeply intertwined in their production.